GamerTab That was an excellent one.

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

SnoopyStyle The Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) is locked up in the Charenton Insane Asylum run by Abbé du Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix). Laundress Madeline LeClerc (Kate Winslet) falls for the lascivious Marquis de Sade and helps him smuggle out his writings. Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte wants him stopped and sends Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) with his tortuous treatments. Royer-Collard marries the young Simone (Amelia Warner) who lived in a convent.Geoffrey Rush is absolutely brilliant as the Marquis de Sade. The acting in this is first rate. I wish Rush get more screen time as the lead character. He's nominated for the Oscar as lead actor but he's more as one of the cast. Royer-Collard's hypocrisy is interesting but the movie spends a little too much time on him. I would rather the movie stay with Geoffrey Rush from start to finish and more Kate Winslet.

chaos-rampant I'm both wary and attracted to films of this sort, period films. On one hand, there is usually good writing, good acting, some luxurious camera-work. And like good sci-fi, they tend to remind us that our present struggles are a continuation, inherited limits.All of which are true here. The film is about the notorious De Sade imprisoned in a madhouse and the purpose of art at large, limits and struggles: just what kind of human being are we? animal or divine? should our expressions reflect or liberate? The actors give their all, Caine and Rush chafing against the limits imposed on their characters from the outside, Winslet and Phoenix forming internal struggles.But the thing is, it's not truly daring, truly provocative. It's not a matter of more sex or more perversion in keeping with Sade, not at all.It's that we have expert theatre but not some reflective human space, what Pasolini could bring in his own period films, not his Sade adaptation but the vitality of his Decameron, the profound and inexplicable joy that hides behind our demons of self and has the power to shatter and ambiguously transform them, showing them to be grotesquely harmless masks forced on us by society.The one great scene here is the one that opens the film, where Sade from his window witnesses an aristocratic lady about to be decapitated before a gleeful mob; transforming desire and caress into a universe of urges, creating an emotional air that is as much of its spying author as of its participants. These few minutes are so perfectly imagined everything else comes across as a slight disappointment.

MBunge This film is a valiant effort to tell a story about a profoundly contemptible human being. It features a fine performance from Geoffrey Rush and boatloads of provocative, controversial moments, but the movie founders on its failed efforts to makes excuses for the horrible nature of its main character.Set in an asylum during Napoleonic France, Quills tells the last bit of the life story of the Marquis De Sade (Geoffrey Rush), the legendarily perverse and deviant writer. He's been locked up in the asylum to try and contain his monstrous imagination, yet he continues to smuggle out new works of blasphemy and pornography with the help of a chamber maid named Madeleine (Kate Winslet). The head of the asylum, a priest named Coulmier (Joanquin Phoenix), is blissfully unaware of De Sade's continued writing until Napoleon himself sends the harsh and unbending Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) to put a stop to De Sade's activities. Royer-Collard presses hard on Coulmier to muzzle De Sade, which results in an increasingly desperate battle of wills between the holy man and the infamous smut-wallower.There are a lot of good things about Quills. It has a lot of sharply written dialog and compelling scenes performed by a talented cast. Geoffrey Rush is quite bold and charismatic as De Sade, but that is the character that the script crashes into and never quite gets around. The Marquis De Sade was, by pretty much any standard, a vile and contemptible human being. He's really not the equivalent of a modern-day pornographer because, not only did his writing dwell on grotesque violence as much as sexual depravity, but De Sade himself engaged in acts that would be considered awful crimes both in his day and ours.De Sade was something like a cultural terrorist and that's not much of an overstatement. If you're going to portray De Sade as some sort of anti-hero or a tragic figure, you need to provide some greater justification for his abominable behavior. His degeneracy needs to be in pursuit of a higher value like truth or freedom. As Quills presents him, De Sade is pretty much a degenerate for the sake of degeneracy. That makes it hard to feel any empathy for him and his situation, no matter how difficult and extreme that situation becomes. The story does suggest his obsession with perversion was a reaction to what De Sade saw during the Terror of the French Revolution. That's an excuse, though, not a justification.Seemingly to compensate for its inability to grapple with its main character, Quills offers up not one but two subplots. One is about the forbidden attraction between priest Coulmier and Madeleine, which does fold back into the struggle between Coulmier and De Sade. The other is about Royer-Collard and his young bride Simone (Amelia Wainer), which is fairly superfluous to the story. It could be completely removed from the film and nothing of importance would be lost. Neither subplot stands on its own and it feels like they were woven into the script because writer Doug Wright didn't know what else he could do with his main character.There's a moderate amount of profanity, nudity and other things of a prurient nature in this film, though not to the excessive amounts that would do justice to the Marquis De Sade. This movie is also, in almost all respects, a well-executed bit of filmmaking. If you go into it thinking already believing there's something worthwhile about De Sade and his lifestyle, you'll probably enjoy Quills. If you're mostly ignorant or have a negative view of the Marquis, you won't find anything here that will enlighten or change your mind.

Scarecrow-88 Geoffrey Rush stars as the notorious Marquis de Sade, languishing in an asylum, allowed some freedoms, though his appetites for causing a stir by way of his quill lands him in a lot of hot water. Kate Winslet, the laundress who moves his written work to the outside where it can be marketed underground to the people who love the Marquis' sordid tales of the violent and erotic. Joaquin Phoenix, the priest over Charenton mental institution, who treats the patients, including the Marquis, with humanity and kindness. Michael Caine, the medical scientist(more like certified torturer, whose methods include dunking the disturbed in water among other ways)who arrives at Charenton at an advisory capacity. Caine's doctor is ferocious and his way of curing the mentally ill is barbaric, a complete polar opposite to Phoenix who wants to keep his inmates free from vile experiments which do more harm than good.The movie amusingly asks us which one's worse, Caine's scientist or Rush's Marquis. Caine is commissioned by Emperor Napoleon to "cure" Marquis because death to such a quietly revered author might make him a martyr for the lower classes. The film shows how Caine's old man is married to a teenage virgin raised in a convent, and we see him force her into rough sex. Yet, his control over her is brief as she soon gains an advantage, his wanting to please her in ways sex can not used as a tool to get her way. Interesting development shows that Caine's wife is an avid reader of the Marquis..talk about irony.The depraved work thrown into the fire by an angered Napoleon is "Justine"..this is the work which repulsed him into action(a very funny scene shows Napoleon sitting upon his throne, his feet unable to touch the floor as if he were a child in a swing, legs flailing). When the Marquis pens a farce mocking Caine and his marriage to the young bride, set to a play designed to insult and ridicule for fun, he enacts a feud he will live to regret.The movie shows people appalled at the way the Marquis writes about his characters' "inadequacies" and devious pursuits and yet they remain curious and find his work even humorous, fighting off giggles.When the Marquis escapes from his cell, thanks to Winslet unlocking his door against her better judgment, Phoenix is forced into a predicament he'll never be able to recover from, his decency towards the patient rewarded with disregard. Basically, upon Caine's arrival, everything the priest had built falls to ruin. By the end, the lives of many will be shattered, death and anguish to all through Caine's actions. Though, despite all his underhanded tactics, no matter what he was able to accomplish in scoring a revenge against the Marquis for his wife's leaving him for a talented home decorator, influenced by the depravity and vice written by his hand, the author's work lives on no matter what the conniving scientist does to him.The movie shows that no matter what punishments are dealt him(remove his means to write, such as quills and paper, cloth and wine, etc), the Marquis finds ways to get his work to the outside world. Eventually, the evil scientist does get rid of the man, and he even sets up a printing factory using the inmates to distribute the Marquis work at the author's wife's permission, but halting the power of the one he so despises will never be easy as long as Phoenix's defrocked priest keeps his memory afresh. QUILLS includes an erotic scene where Phoenix fantasizes making love to a ravishing Winslet and Rush devours his scenes like a mutt with rabies. It's easy to see that Rush summoned the spirit of Marquis de Sade while portraying the role, I thought he wholly brought him to life in QUILLS. The asylum itself can be presented as both a refuge for the inmates and a bleak place once Caine's presence constrains the freedom they once had, his power attributing to the very Emperor who gave him absolute authority to see that order is kept."My most glorious prose..filtered through the minds of the insane."